29A – Venture Concept No. 2

Improvements/changes

I had comment asking more about my timeline of implementing the features, future plans, as well as forming a team and in a sense "marketing" it to them. I also got feedback from friends about my idea saying that adoption was important (mainly referring to consumers)

Timeline 
Based on the blockchain, my tokens are set to sell on the market from March to May to the public , but it is still possible to sell the tokens before and after that.
I do believe that a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) could be out as fast as end of July assuming I start working on it full time after end April when I finish my exams. It could be faster as I am taking only two courses which are related to my venture and application and have time to reuse resources to build the product.
I plan to have the interface for making payments and viewing payments/receiving notifications of payments in the first version by then. By the end of 2019 I would hope to see merchant-enabled selling of tokens to users, charts and other business analytics for vendors.For end users, features I would like to see completed are budget tracking and digital receipt functions.
I am not to sure if I would get an IOS developer along an Android developer but my plan is to work on a native app on Android.

I plan to work with large companies like supermarket chains locally , in Singapore as well as one of the budget airline companies. It would be good to form this partnerships by the end of 2019 and even if I don't I hope to growth my network locally with many big institutions and companies.

Talent acquisition/ team forming &  Marketing/growth and adoption

As for getting talent and forming a team , I would leverage on my background and connections to both the technology ministry as well as people in the blockchain industry. I plan to get grants from the governments and possible the team behind the blockchain I'm building on as well as working with the respective government agencies, regulators and even cryptocurrency exchanges.

In terms of adoption , again I wish to help local businesses by offering them a good period of free transactions on my payment system as well as giving hawkers (open-air food stalls,which is common in Singapore) free access to business analytic tools as well as no fees for transactions.

Future plans

I have a few other plans in my mind from the past , one is regarding the F&B industry , a couple are actual products to make life easier , and I could think of a few technology related applications I might consider developing.

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Opportunity
People who travel around need a easy way to spend and purchase goods , keeping track of their balances and reduce the hassle of converting their foreign currency into local currency.
Businesses need to be able to accept payments from all customers including tourists and they want the lowest costs and best services and systems with the most user friendly interface.

More people are relying on their smartphones and smart devices for everyday purposes and online shopping is growing. The digitization of consumerism is a natural path for digital and mobile payments to follow suit and develop applications and systems to meet this trend. Most of these users will naturally be the younger generation , teenagers to adults around their 30s which are more technology savvy. However, seniors and older adults have higher spending power and are more likely to travel and go on vacation and they must not be forgotten.

It is a big opportunity to jump into the disruption of currency and how we make payments in the future and the window of opportunity is closing with more and more teams working on projects in the space. However, blockchain and cryptocurrency technology is still in its infancy.


Innovation

TIPS is a payment solution platform that allows merchants to accept TRON and TIPS tokens and access business enhancing tools and analytics via various charts as well as other premium tools like inventory management.
The payment application can be used by any mobile phone or tablet and will also have a web solution for online stores.
The application will have two kinds of digital wallets : personal wallet and TIPS/merchant wallet (for merchants) Merchants can accept payments using their personal wallet but there will be no enhanced user interface and business metrics calculated for such payments. It will be treated like a peer to peer payment between two individuals. Currently the plan is to allow personal wallet payments to be free of charge but will incur blockchain fees which are very minute.

Personal wallets are ones that users are in complete control of the private keys on the blockchain, whereas TIPS/merchant wallets would mostly operate off-chain for the transfer of TIPS tokens from merchants to TIPS for the fees. However, payments between users and merchants will still be made using the blockchain but additional payment data will be stored by TIPS.

All payments using the merchant wallet will have a service fee of around 1% and a maximum fee of 25 cents equivalent of TIPS tokens.
We will also offer a tiered subscription solution to merchants where they can opt to have more premium services if they require.  There will be a free tier as well as levies for special small businesses which will go through a process and have their service fees waived as there social entrepreneurship plans for such businesses.
We plan to allow merchants to purchase our tokens and in turn sell these tokens as credit in order to purchase their goods. This in turn increase the adoption of cryptocurrency as well as mobile payments. However, we will have to determine if this would be legally sound.

Additionally the venture will run as a candidate for a super representative of the TRON blockchain. Super representatives are the top 27 voted entities which are given the right to verify the blockchain and earn rewards for verifying blocks. Most representatives give a percentage of those rewards to voters , which freeze their TRON tokens in order to gain "Tron power" to vote. We will consider holders of the TIPS tokens as part of the votes and will give them a bonus reward. We also allow users to enable automatic revoting which means they will be rewarded in TIPS tokens which will automatically compound the rewards for the next payout (currently you have to refreeze the rewarded tokens to compound rewards). More super representatives are implementing this kind of system where tokens bought are used for votes.


Venture Concept

Businesses and especially smaller businesses want to accept payments from customers which use frequently and ones that are easy for them. However, banks , card companies and payment gateway companies charge relatively high charges to businesses. Providing free business tools as well as lowered costs. This can in turn help businesses return the benefits back to consumers from these lowered costs.

With a goal of bringing the product overseas and allowing merchants from all over the world to use our system, users can stand to benefit from the system as they can now pay purchases with a familiar system with no hassle without having to convert any money. Users also stand to get perks form the merchants that we work with as we help to lower the costs for them , and in turn merchants giving users small benefits like free gifts/drinks or discounts.

Other competitors have been focusing on consumer adoption and not on the business aspect. They also lack user friendliness in their solutions.

Additional

Most important resource - networks and relationships with organizations and individuals in the blockchain/technology industry as well as with merchants that will use my network

Next step - form a team and start running for a super representative in the TRON blockchain ecosystem

Whats next for me - perhaps after a couple of years , I could move on to my other ideas which some are technology related while others are not.